1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a green cores collecting apparatus and relates more particularly to an apparatus for automatically collecting cores ejected from a green corer vehicle designed to drill and excavate cores from the greens of golf courses for improvement of cultivation of turfs.
2. Prior Art
As illustrated in FIGS. 8 through 10 of the accompanying drawings, a conventional green corer vehicle typically comprises a number of rams 31 located at a rear portion of the vehicle to be moved up and down by an upper crank shaft 32 and a same number of vertical drilling pipes 34, each of which is fitted at the rear end of a fitting member 33 horizontally arranged at the lower end of the corresponding ram 31.
The green corer vehicle 30 can move on the ground G by automotive force of an engine 35, which entails rotary movement of the crank shaft 32 to intermittently move up and down the rams 31 and consequently drills the ground G by the lower end of the drilling pipes 34 fitted to the rams 31.
When such a drilling pipe 34 is driven into the ground G, it is fill with a certain amount of earth 37 in such a manner that the portion of the earth 37 that initially occupies the inside of the pipe 34 is pushed up by the following portion of the earth 37 and produces a core 38 from the upper opening of the drilling pipe 34, which eventually falls on the ground G.
It has been a painstaking work to collect the cores 38 formed and dropped on the ground G.
The inventor of the present invention proposed in Japanese Patent Publication No. 63-105601 a green corer vehicles equipped with an automatic cores collecting apparatus.
A green corer vehicle equipped with an automatic cores collecting apparatus as disclosed in Japanese Patent Publication No. 63-105601 comprises an ejected cores receiving vessel (not shown) attached to the rear end of a corer vehicle as shown in FIG. 8 and comprising a receiving plate and a bucket conveyer (not shown) provided on said plate. Such cores receiving vessels have been popularly used as they save considerably labor for collecting cores scattering on the ground of a golf course.
However, since a corer vehicle requires different drilling pipes with different pipe diameters depending on the size, properties and other factors of the golf course and, when the cores receiver is securely fitted to the rear portion of the vehicle, replacement of drilling pipes in turn requires a very long and painstaking operation.
Therefore, it is an object of the present invention to provide a green cores collecting apparatus which allows easy replacement of drilling pipes and is free from the above mentioned problems.